Hook Model
Nir Eyal, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, 2014
Trigger → Action → Variable Reward → Investment, repeated until the product is automatic.
In plain language
Nir Eyal studied what made products genuinely habit-forming versus briefly popular. He named four phases: a Trigger (external or internal) prompts an Action, the Action yields a Variable Reward (unpredictable payoff), and the user makes an Investment (effort or data) that makes the next trigger more powerful.
Social media is the classic example: notification (trigger) → open app (action) → unpredictable feed (variable reward) → post or follow (investment) → more notifications.
The ethical version of the Hook Model requires that the habit genuinely benefits the user. The unethical version is addiction engineering. The difference lies in the Variable Reward delivering real value, not manufactured dopamine.
How Maxim applies it
- Maxim's session-continuity design is a Hook Model loop in the ethical direction. Trigger: you open Claude Code. Action: run a /mxm-* command. Variable reward: an actionable output with a confidence rubric — the reward is variable because your task is different every time. Investment: MemPalace captures the decisions and skill gaps, making tomorrow's session sharper.
- The investment compounds. After ten sessions, Maxim knows your architecture, your brand voice, your skill gaps, your open handoffs. The cost of switching to a generic LLM isn't the $19.99 — it's the compound investment in session memory.
- The Behavioral Intelligence pack (L1.6) exposes Hook Model as a tool for operators to apply to their own products. /mxm-behavior hook-design walks you through the four phases for your product, flagging where you're in the ethical zone versus the addiction-engineering zone.
What generic LLMs get wrong
Generic LLMs design onboarding flows with triggers and actions but no variable-reward mechanism — users complete the flow once and forget. The Investment step is usually missing entirely. Maxim's hook-design skill walks you through all four phases and flags the ones you're skipping.